Maya Archaeologists Unearth New 2012 Monument With End Date

[Constabul Profile]

Maya Archaeologists Unearth New 2012 Monument With 'End Date' of Dec. 21, 2012
ScienceDaily (June 28, 2012) — Archaeologists working at the site of La Corona in Guatemala have discovered a 1,300-year-old-year Maya text that provides only the second known reference to the so-called "end date" of the Maya calendar, December 21, 2012. The discovery, one of the most significant hieroglyphic finds in decades, was announced June 28 at the National Palace in Guatemala.


Marcello A. Canuto, director of Tulane’s Middle American Research Institute, excavating significant hieroglyphic panels in La Corona in Guatemala. (Credit: Image courtesy of Tulane University)

"This text talks about ancient political history rather than prophecy," says Marcello A. Canuto, director of Tulane's Middle American Research Institute and co-director of the excavations at La Corona.

Since 2008, Canuto and Tomás Barrientos of the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala have directed excavations at La Corona, a site previously ravaged by looters.

"Last year, we realized that looters of a particular building had discarded some carved stones because they were too eroded to sell on the antiquities black market," said Barrientos, "so we knew they found something important, but we also thought they might have missed something."

What Canuto and Barrientos found was the longest text ever discovered in Guatemala. Carved on staircase steps, it records 200 years of La Corona history, states David Stuart, director of the Mesoamerica Center at The University of Texas at Austin, who was part of a 1997 expedition that first explored the site.

While deciphering these new finds in May, Stuart recognized the 2012 reference on a stairway block bearing 56 delicately carved hieroglyphs. It commemorated a royal visit to La Corona in AD 696 by the most powerful Maya ruler of that time, Yuknoom Yich'aak K'ahk' of Calakmul, only a few months after his defeat by long-standing rival Tikal in AD 695. Thought by scholars to have been killed in this battle, this ruler was visiting allies and allaying their fears after his defeat.

"This was a time of great political turmoil in the Maya region and this king felt compelled to allude to a larger cycle of time that happens to end in 2012," says Stuart.

So, rather than prophesy, the 2012 reference places this king's troubled reign and accomplishments into a larger cosmological framework.

"In times of crisis, the ancient Maya used their calendar to promote continuity and stability rather than predict apocalypse," says Canuto.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 181735.htm

[Yuya63 Profile]

[Cia212 Profile]

While I don't believe in any of this 2012 stuff...this was an interesting article from an archeology standpoint.

[Constabul Profile]

Yeah the header is a bit misleading, But is theirs.

A side note, makes you wonder just how much 'undiscovered' material is in the hands of private collectors, and just what such things might could add to the overall knowledge base.
Pure speculation.
But a thought.

[Seahawk Profile]

Yeah. It's difficult to know which to believe. Seems they, themselves, were not in full agreement on the end date. lol. Plus, there are those interviews with modern Mayans that say those dates on the "end date" calendar aren't end dates at all, but the end of one specific period.
http://www.disclose.tv/forum/2012-according-to-today-s-maya-t9985.html

Who knows? At least we'll find out the answer to one question this year, eh?

The following article is from Science Daily, also.

Inscriptions Found On Walls of a Maya Dwelling Reflect Calendar Reaching Well Beyond 2012

ScienceDaily (May 10, 2012) — A vast city built by the ancient Maya and discovered nearly a century ago is finally starting to yield its secrets.




“Younger Brother Obsidian,” as labeled on the north wall of the Maya city’s house by an unknown hand, was painted in the 9th century A.D. Archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University excavates the house in the ruins of the Maya city of Xultún. Younger Brother Obsidian may have been the town scribe. Excavation and preservation of the site were supported by the National Geographic Society. (Credit: Photo by Tyrone Turner © 2012 National Geographic)


Excavating for the first time in the sprawling complex of Xultún in Guatemala's Petén region, a team of archaeologists lead by Boston University Assistant Professor of Archaeology William Saturno has uncovered a structure that contains what appears to be a work space for the town's scribe, its walls adorned with unique paintings -- one depicting a lineup of men in black uniforms -- and hundreds of scrawled numbers. Many are calculations relating to the Maya calendar.

One wall of the structure, thought to be a house, is covered with tiny, millimeter-thick, red and black glyphs unlike any seen before at other Maya sites. Some appear to represent the various calendrical cycles charted by the Maya -- the 260-day ceremonial calendar, the 365-day solar calendar, the 584-day cycle of the planet Venus and the 780-day cycle of Mars, reports Saturno, who led the exploration and excavation.

"For the first time we get to see what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community," Saturno said. "It's like an episode of TV's 'Big Bang Theory,' a geek math problem and they're painting it on the wall. They seem to be using it like a blackboard."

The discovery is reported in the June issue of National Geographic magazine and in the May 11 issue of the journal Science.

The project scientists say that despite popular belief, there is no sign that the Maya calendar -- or the world -- was to end in the year 2012, just one of its calendar cycles. "It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000," said Anthony Aveni,, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University, a coauthor of the Science paper. "The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over."

The mural represents the first Maya art to be found on the walls of a house. "There are tiny glyphs all over the wall, bars and dots representing columns of numbers. It's the kind of thing that only appears in one place -- the Dresden Codex, which the Maya wrote many centuries later. We've never seen anything like it," said David Stuart, Schele Professor of Mesoamerican Art and Writing at the University of Texas-Austin, who deciphered the glyphs.

The vegetation-covered structure was first spotted in 2010 by Saturno's student Max Chamberlain, who was following looters' trenches to explore the site of Xultún, hidden in the remote rain forest of the Petén. Then, supported by a series of grants from the National Geographic Society, Saturno and his team launched an organized exploration and excavation of the house, working urgently to beat the region's rainy seasons, which threatened to erase what time had so far preserved.

Xultún, a 12-square-mile site where tens of thousands once lived, was first discovered about 100 years ago by Guatemalan workers and roughly mapped in the 1920s by Sylvanus Morley, who named the site "Xultún" -- "end stone." Scientists from Harvard University mapped more of the site in the 1970s. The house discovered by Saturno's team was numbered 54 of 56 structures counted and mapped at that time. Thousands at Xultún remain uncounted.

The team's excavations reveal that monumental construction at Xultún began in the first centuries B.C. The site thrived until the end of the Classic Maya period; the site's last carved monument dates to around 890 A.D. Xultún stood only about five miles from San Bartolo, where in 2001 Saturno found rare, extensive murals painted on the walls of a ritual structure by the ancient Maya.

"It's weird that the Xultún finds exist at all," Saturno said. "Such writings and artwork on walls don't preserve well in the Maya lowlands, especially in a house buried only a meter below the surface."

Read the complete article here:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120510141905.htm

[One-23 Profile]

Any one know what happened to the documentary "Revelations of the Mayans 2012 and Beyond",
I know it was steeped in controversy , but can't find any reference to any updates regarding any confirmed release dates, Has it been canned or suppressed?

[Seahawk Profile]

Found this, it was posted on the 24th, but not sure of the original release date. Halfway through it, and some of it looks new to me- stuff I hadn't seen yet. Not sure. Make sure you hit the CC, translate. If it's already been posted, I'll just delete it.

Upload to Disclose.tv

[Seahawk Profile]

Lol. Sheit! The alien at 2:43 looks like the alien at the end of Prometheus.

I don't know about all of this. What if some local artisans made these objects two years ago, and buried them at the dig site, or something. No idea. It's unreal.

[One-23 Profile]

Cheers hawk, would be totally amazing if this turned out to be fact, but the likelihood of us ever finding out is infinitesimal.

An amazing similarity betwween the rock alien and the mayan king pacal

[Sumonht1990 Profile]

People those think himself to be so wise are really fool. They think themselves and only themselves to be right. When they hear of something which conflict their logic they decide it to be wrong. But don't understand that man know so little.